Victim of Cringe. Gone Too Soon.
I handle cringe humor perfectly fine. But genuine, real-world, second-hand embarrassment physically repels me. I wanted to map out the why.
Beyond the standard awkward daily interactions, there is a specific class of performance moments - where someone is the center of attention and simply has to deliver - that triggers my fight-or-flight response.
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Take stand-up comedy. When a joke doesn't land and the comedian stumbles through the re-routing, the air leaves the room.
Fortunately, I don't run into this often because I largely avoid the medium.
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Poetry recitals are where it gets complicated. My baseline view is that poetry can be transcendent, but only in the hands of a very few. The public recitals I've witnessed usually feature amateurs. So, there is an element of projected elitism on my part: I preemptively expect them to be subpar, which starts the embarrassment engine early.
But it’s compounded by the material. Poetry has an element of vulnerability. Watching someone fail while being intimately vulnerable doubles the agony.
The dissonance here is striking: someone can give the most intimate, vulnerable prose speech, and I won't feel a drop of embarrassment.
Failing at prose is just failing to communicate. Failing at poetry is failing at art.
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But singing is the most complex for me.
I'm a musician. Performing on a stage feels natural. But I am not a singer. Watching professional vocalists doesn't bother me at all, but when an amateur sings in a casual setting, the embarrassment is violent.
On introspection, the mechanism is fascinating. I view playing an instrument as an acquirable skill. It is an external tool you have mastered. There's obvious embarrassment when someone lacks technical skill but possesses unfounded confidence, sure. But singing goes deeper than skill.
The timbre of your voice is an immutable reality. It is a biometric. It is a fundamental part of your identity. To expose yourself like that - to sing in front of others - implies that you are okay with being perceived. Exposed.
I don't think I am.
And in that moment of watching them sing, the boundary between observer and performer dissolves. I experience their exposure as my own. And my nervous system - on their behalf, or maybe on mine - hits eject.